Holidays

There has been a funny feeling this time of year.  Who the heck came up with Santa Clause?  An open lie to millions of kids.  A socially accepted mindfuck.  And a magic tree inside the house with lights and presents?  Really?

Oh, I get it, Santa Clause was real, only he was a shaman carrying Amanita Muscaria mushrooms in his sack.  Sweet.

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Dream Tools

Intent is the most important factor in waking up in our dreams, but it alone might not always get the job done.  Natural dreaming remedies can be extremely valuable tools: mugwort, lavender, rose, valerian root, and red spider lily extract [galantamine] have all proven to be effective.  Perhaps the most helpful herbs for this endeavor are a pair of indigenous teas: Calea Zacatechichi and Guayusa, both of which produce particularly vivid and sensually rich dreaming.

Calea Zacatechichi is used by the Chontal people of Oaxaca, Mexico, normally right before going to sleep.  Chontal shamans call this herb the “leaf of God” [thepelakano] for its clarifying and euphoric inducing properties.  Calea Z helps promote the frequency, lucidity and vibrancy of dreams.  It is also used to reduce fevers and to cure gastrointestinal problems.  Unfortuantely, Calea Z has a less than pleasing, extremely bitter taste and has even been described as “the worst tasting tea on the planet.”  It also often induces nausea, which is why many people prefer to smoke it.

Guayusa is called the “dreaming tea” by the Kichwa and Shwar people of the Ecuadorian Amazon and has been used for thousands of years by various indigenous nationalities throughout northeastern South America.  Guayusa is used both to recall dreams from the night before, as well as to clarify the ones to come.  Kichwa families often rise in the early morning to drink Guayusa together and recount their dreams.  Dream lucidity and recollection are greatly increased with the help of this tea, which, in contrast to Calea Z, has a slightly sweet and pleasing taste.

The Kichwa refer to Guayusa as a “key for opening consciousness.”  In addition to its dreaming properties, Guayusa also helps to keep the mind clear and strong while awake.  Hunters will drink it to stay alert at night and Shamans utilize it for general health and mental clarity.  It is said that Guayusa retunes our mental frequencies, cleans out our spiritual/energetic blockages, and reconnects us with nature and all that is sacred.  When we drink Guayusa, the Kichwa say, our vibrations align with the natural world around us: bugs don’t bite, predators don’t attack, and the jungle opens the doors of its heart, allowing us to pass safely through and to its most special spaces.

According to legend, Guayusa was sacredly gifted to us from beyond this realm by benevolent spirits for the very purpose that we may dream and activate “dreaming.”  While this may seem farfetched to some, it becomes all the more plausible when we consider that Guayusa has never been found in flower.  This means that Guayusa trees have only managed to survive and multiply through human cultivation and the taking of cuttings.  Special indeed, a tree that cannot reproduce on its own but yet has managed to exist and thrive for thousands and thousands of years due to its spiritual, dreaming, and clarifying properties.

Here's to all the earth medicines, and to clarity in every moment.

Sweat Lodging

Today we celebrate sweat lodging, a wonderful way to clean the body and spirit.  The skin is the largest detoxification organ we have, and about a third of the toxic waste we let go of does so through our outer layer.  Sitting in a sweat gives the body a rapid cleaning.  The songs that are sung help to fuel the spirit, and the earth connections of the ceremony help to strengthen our bond with nature. 

On a physical level, sweat lodging greatly accelerates the detoxification process of the skin and body, letting go of  and getting rid of harmful pollutants and chemicals.  One sweat lodging session of just fifteen minutes [when conditions are good] can do a job that takes the kidneys twenty-four hours to achieve: heavy metal excretion.  This gets rid of toxic metals such as mercury, lead, copper and zinc.  Other benefits include elimination of urea and removal of excessive salts and lactic acid, responsible for stiff muscles and fatigue.  Capillaries are dilated, increasing blood flow to the skin.  The heart beats faster and fluids flow more readily, flushing out impurities in vital organs. The lungs can also profit as clogged respiratory passages are opened by the heat, static channels begin to flow.

Perhaps the greatest benefit of sweat lodging is the reconditioning that it provides both our bodies and our awareness.  It helps us to retune, revitalization, become more resistant to disease and infection, feel warm in the cold, cool in the heat.

It is said that sweat lodging is a form of being reborn.  The lodge represents the womb of mother earth.  It is dark, secure, nurturing, healing.  The ground is soft and we sink into the warming roundness.  We go unclothed, without our badges, symbols of education, status and wealth.  We are removed of all the camouflage of our ego.  We are pure and humble, yet present and full of love for ourselves and our earth.  An in this way as we bathe ourselves in the warmth of the mother and let our impurities go, we unite with our spirit selves.

We thank you, sweat lodge.  Be seeing you.

Good Times

Wisdom from the floppy haired kid on the balcony: ENJOY NOW.

Besides, this is way too good to not brighten your day:

Being Here, Being There

That dream last night was pretty damn real.  You remember.

From the shamanic perspective, dreams are as real as anything else we experience, perhaps even more so.  Holding this belief makes it completely natural to move between places and exist in different spaces.  Spend some time over there, come back over here.  The reality we call “life” is just one of many, and it might not even be the most interesting one.

So what, then, can we make of that?

Well, one thing we can do is to will ourselves awake in our dreams.  Through concentration and intent this is possible for anyone to accomplish, and it leads to the realization that it is also possible to use will to navigate through our experiences.  By doing this we become active players who can steer the spaceship and affect our adventures.  If, however, we never decide to exercise this power, we remain passive and rudderless, just floating about aimlessly, at the mercy of reaction and oblivion.

Just as in our ‘regular’ lives, anywhere we may journey to in a dream is an opportunity to express, to do, to be and to learn.  It’s fun, and the best part is that we get to take that experience back here to earth with us and apply it any way we want to. 

So, when do we decide to wake up?  When do we begin to actively participate in existence and all that it offers, not just here but everywhere else we go?  It seems that we do this exactly when we want to.  It is the power of our will.

We will ourselves to wake up in our dreams.  We will ourselves to open our eyes, to stand up, to fly.  We reopen the cosmic libraries of infinite knowledge.  We renew the galactic library cards that we lost so long ago.  We make use of every single experience, no matter where it is.  We see.

We move through spaces creatively.

Conducting, vibrating,

We give, we see.

Awake in our dreams, we wake up space,

Flowing effortlessly, place to place.

Lucidity, as we once knew,

Where there was only static now music comes through.

We dance, move, shake, take flight.

We wake, we wake, it feels right.

Bright Ideas

Amid the craziness, there are many beautiful things happening right now, so here's to them.  Urban gardening, reconnecting with earth, reclaiming spaces, renewing energy, renewing our place on this planet.  We’re certainly not close to giving more than we take, but we’re taking less than we were before and giving more, which means, at least, that the flow has changed directions.  There are some amazing ideas kicking around in people’s heads out there on how to make things better.  Here are a few from a recent suburban redesign competition:

Regenerative medians: many suburban streets are 35-50 ft wide, unnecessarily using space that could be devoted to producing ecological, social and economic resources.  Medians could be built in the center, separating the two lanes of traffic and still leaving room for parking on one side of the street.  The medians could then be used to cultivate fruits and vegetables, which could be sold at a community grocery stand stationed on the same median.  A localized water treatment system could even be tied into the existing infrastructure, using treated local water to feed the crops, lowering the community’s dependence on distant water supplies.  The medians could also help to increase pedestrianism and social interaction within the neighborhood.

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Big box stores turned biofuel generators: with seemingly little investment, abandoned big box stores could be used to harvest algae, which is inexpensive and grows on waste nutrients.  Algae produces between 5,000 and 15,000 gallons of oil per acre per year, which is 10 times its next yield competitor (palm oil).  It’s estimated that one abandoned Wal-Mart or Home Depot can easily exceed 100,000 gallons of biolfuel production per year.  Additionally, parking lot space could be converted to solar collection and wind turbine space, producing clean electric power, which could be used to charge numerous electric cars.

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Abandoned McMansions turned to wetlands and natural water filtration systems: vacant McMansions at the periphery of cities can be converted into eco-water treatment machines in which a micro-ecosystem of plants, algae, bacteria fish and clams are present to purify the water.  A micro-wetland ecosystem built in this way could help to sustain larger wetland growth and help provide clean water to urban centers.  The highway system could also be transformed into a multifunctional infrastructure that transports cars, trains and bikes, as well as forming a network to help with the transport of water.

These are just a few of the creative solutions that are forming in these ever changing times.  And as they change, we change, and we ask, why did we come here?

source: http://www.re-burbia.com/finalists/

Standing In The Fire

They know.  We know.  The change is inside.

There is a feeling deep inside the collective consciousness, a knowing of the sacredness of nature and of the essentiality of returning to the land in these tumultuous times.  Connecting with the energy of nature, the energy that comes directly from source, helps us to find the power to change the things we want to change.  Nature is the REAL earth, our truly natural surroundings as residents of this planet.  We have most certainly disconnected ourselves from our mother earth.  We return to her.

Here's To You

Here's to the music makers,

Here's to the dreamers of dreams,

Here's to the wanderers and old sea breakers,

And here's to the desolate streams;

Here's to the world losers and forsakers,

On whom the pale moon gleams;

Let us be the movers and shakers, makers,

Of the world, and all that it seems.